This would be why I focus less and less on IT work and more and more on repairing/selling trains and managing a model railroad club. Most of the work that is brought to me is antique trains. But then, aside from the microchips in modern models, the core technology has not changed much since the 1920s on these trains. The same, in a way, can be said for computers and websites though. The core science, the nuts and bolts have changed very little, really. Repairing trains, at least I get a LOT of latitude to do things my way, I got no team of people each saying something different. Bob, the owner of the shop, has long since figured out that he needs only give me a list of things to get done, and let me figure out how to best do them. Despite the horrors of the last few years, at least I can spend the day working with trains, which is where my heart and soul truly lays. IT work paid the bills, and I still do IT support for a couple small businesses, and repair home computers, but it isn't where my heart is. Fortunately I also happen to be very, very good at repairing trains. We get people a thousand miles away that mail us their old trains for repair because they've heard of my work from fellow hobbyists online. That there's still a place that either has old parts, can get them, or can hand make them, and that is very rare now.

Without trains America Stops- Support Amtrak

Old trains never die. They just sit in ruin and wait until the day they are taken in by a skilled craftsman and rebuilt to their former glory.

The only way to save elites is to f*** ourselves way up up up to the Mars and, subsequently, further into The Void.

My rough guess, the recent not only shift of political choices, but also a shift of life choices in general (like, I will become a politician of sort, even if it's only via Facebook) is because of Lebensraum issue. You can view Nazi Germany as an Evil, but labeling Evil an Evil doesn't make it more understandable or easier to beat.

My view is, Nazi Germany didn't arise from some abstract feeling od doing Evil among weaker ones, like Jews. Like, we're now start pumping frogs or put people into gas chambers just because we feel like it. People are inherently Good, this is what I believe, even during my low mood periods. I also question the marxist belief that people fight for basic goods, like water and food and everything else is just an extension. Anyway, science works strongly against marxism, what psychologists generally tend to believe in recent years is that what makes you a Human is what you believe in, not what you remember or have. Research. or at least what I know, shows that people with amnesia, like people saved from accidents, generally know how to behave, even it they don't recognize their relatives.

Germany with its central, geographically, and leading, culturally, role produced so many intellectual individuals and built such a flowering society that it led to obvious violence. Check the early XX century - in terms of religion, philosophy, science this was the epicenter of known Universe. After all, when you feel (note the difference between you know and you feel you know) you know something you immediately feel an urge to enforce this knowledge upon "inferior" beings. Sort of cultural bigbang.

Brain awereness leads to wars, not bodily biology. Our minds look for space to flower and when they clash with other minds they immediately enter war phase. Internet is new NG. There's this great British movie with young Tim Roth playing young Nazi who helps his black teenage runaway friend. According to his ideology he should kill him, but they run together. Why? Bodies cooperate, brains fight. Symbolism and language, combined with lack of development ways lead to violence altogether. They can run thats why they cooperate. If you have nowhere to run, nothing to achieve, you degrade into nihilism.

Nihilism is not about cruelty or mindless violence. Nihilism is the brain that went blind alley.

We need some Big Leap Forward, otherwise we'll not amuse ourselves to death like Postman predicted, but we'll choke to death with boredom and obviousness.

People hate Trump (or Kaczyński), but at least they're up to something. The direction is wrong, but the premonitions are correct. We need Huge Global Narrative.

"As you have noticed over the years, we are not angry people." (itebygur)

(...)Also he {Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war [WWI], certainly all “progressive” thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. In such aview of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength,
knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control
and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life.(...)

(...)After a few years of slaughter and starvation “Greatest happiness of the greatest number” is a good
slogan, but at this moment “Better an end with horror than a horror without end” is a winner. Now that we
are fighting against the man who coined it, we ought not to underrate its emotional appeal.(...)

My man.

"As you have noticed over the years, we are not angry people." (itebygur)

The Treaty of Versailles has a bit to do with Hitler's rise too. The economic chaos Germany was in because of the harsh terms, and the French bearing down harder and harder. Hitler did have a convenient scapegoat, the Jewish and the Communists (Which he felt were closely intertwined). A scapegoat that played well into the feelings of WWI soldiers, that Germany had been sold out by politicians, that there was some sort of back room deal. I've studied WWII history quite a bit myself. I need to head to the shop soon, and get my coffee on the way, so I will just leave the rest brief: Nazisim did not necessarily expect to destroy other races. Hitler's feelings were that each race achieves its best when it is seperated from the other ones. He gave Jesse Owens a much better reception in the 1936 Olympics than FDR did. Hitler offered Owens a banquet. FDR snubbed him inviting only white Olympians to a presidental dinner.

Without trains America Stops- Support Amtrak

Old trains never die. They just sit in ruin and wait until the day they are taken in by a skilled craftsman and rebuilt to their former glory.

I'm not sure about Owens, I think it was politics. What I'm interested in is psychology, not politics. Politics is dirty mostly because it is openly manifested human activity. If somebody manifests something openly he/she usually lies, this is clear for everyone, even most unaware persons.

Thus internet is a dirty activity, due to its false openness. It has been advertised as an utopia, but proved to be a place of manipulation. Nothing's here for certain, so people try to refer to what's certain. What's certain in "real life"? Sex. Violence. Family. The usual WASP agenda.

Evil is evil not because it is evil but because of its blatancy. It's omnipresent since bigbang. You want to wipe evil? Change human genome.

"As you have noticed over the years, we are not angry people." (itebygur)

I'm not sure about Owens, I think it was politics. What I'm interested in is psychology, not politics. Politics is dirty mostly because it is openly manifested human activity. If somebody manifests something openly he/she usually lies, this is clear for everyone, even most unaware persons.

Thus internet is a dirty activity, due to its false openness. It has been advertised as an utopia, but proved to be a place of manipulation. Nothing's here for certain, so people try to refer to what's certain. What's certain in "real life"? Sex. Violence. Family. The usual WASP agenda.

Evil is evil not because it is evil but because of its blatancy. It's omnipresent since bigbang. You want to wipe evil? Change human genome.

How did I even meet this person?

Well, this post is agreed by both of us. I'm Maria, from Tomar, Portugal, and this elf from the woods is my boyfriend, temporal, i hope (his words)

And no, his girlfreind is no longer a "redneck" girl from Poland

Is it ok now, are we finished?

"As you have noticed over the years, we are not angry people." (itebygur)

Also, hi RWM! (And anyone else who still lurks around here) How are you doing these days?

As for myself, I find myself having a lot of time off lately, because I left my job at Wal-Mart. Being unemployed is somewhat troubling, but I needed to get away from that place; things are constantly getting worse there, and I needed to get away and destress. I'm pretty careful with my money, so I should be able to get by for a while, until whatever job I end up doing next, so I'm not too worried about that for the moment. For now, I'm just trying to relax.

[size=84]"A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe."
Pierre Burton[/size]

Heh, so it isn't just me then? That's a relief. Nah, I've never been one for the very abstract. My mind works in diagrams and schematics. Ever see the movie The Aviator, with Leo DiCaprio playing Howard Hughs? A scene when Howard is asked about a part on the Hercules (Or Spruce Goose if you prefer) and they show how his mind works, quickly scanning copies of the blueprints in his mind, all in great detail. My mind works much the same way.

Without trains America Stops- Support Amtrak

Old trains never die. They just sit in ruin and wait until the day they are taken in by a skilled craftsman and rebuilt to their former glory.

Huh, I think I want to see that movie now. Sadly, it doesn't seem to be on Netflix... I'll have to check the library.

And yeah, I think it's normal for different people to think differently. Speaking for myself, I've had occasion to wonder if I'm somewhere on the autistic spectrum. I've known for a long time that I'm different from most people in ways that I could never quite verbalize, like my mind processes thoughts and emotions differently. Unfortunately, there's a lot of misinformation about autism out there because it's largely stigmatized in the media, (especially from groups like "Autism Speaks," which is clearly a hate group masquerading as a support group) so I've hesitated to call myself autistic, but in more recent years, I've wondered if that's a label I should learn to embrace.

[size=84]"A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe."
Pierre Burton[/size]

Hate group does not begin to describe them. Modern day Nazis would be pretty close. When I was much younger, I was in a facility that Autism Speaks has praised. It was a living Hell on Earth. Female "Inmates" (As we often referred to ourselves, a sort of dark humor way to refer to being in a place that is basically a prison for those whose only "Crime" is a token disability) raped and put through abortions when needed. Non verbal, limited motor skills, didn't matter to the staff. Beatings, degrading, dehumanizing treatment, for three years I was put through it. And yet, according to AS, it's such a great place! Of course, AS did also endorse Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, almost a year AFTER the United Nations condemned it's practices as inhumane and classified it as torture. Big surprise. Not. The mortifying awful memories I have of the place I was in still haunt me to this day, along with the perpetual question: "I got out in one piece. What of everyone else?".

If you want a quick lesson in how rotten humanity can be, just look at the places AS endorses.

Without trains America Stops- Support Amtrak

Old trains never die. They just sit in ruin and wait until the day they are taken in by a skilled craftsman and rebuilt to their former glory.

Jay, hate today is mostly the virtual hate. Surprisingly, the world in its global human mass is becoming more and more tolerant, with hate crimes decreasing (globally, statistically speaking), only The Internet has claimed many lives and then it regurgitates the corpses. But Internet is not the life.

I can come up, just at this very moment, with any totally hatred post that you can imagine, dealing with women, Holocaust, disabilities, leftists, rightists, sexual minorities, Trump, Kaczynski, Tusk, Putin, being on any drug or alcohol you can imagine. But it's only a newfound fascination with narrative.

There was this philosopher, Foucault, which you might want to read in your free time, who claimed, that the power belongs to those people who are capable of enforcing the narrative upon the people. Internet is just the right tool in wrong hands.

Rl is what counts. Everything else is a hoax.

"As you have noticed over the years, we are not angry people." (itebygur)

Enough of the hatred and horrifying tales.
Lets all play games, have fun and enjoy life before it all gets sucked into a terrifying pit of misery and torment.

Okay, hmm... happy things...

Well, last week, I performed in a Christmas concert with my barbershop group and I got a solo bit where I did the narration for "You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch," and it was a lot of fun and I got lots of praise for my performance. Also, it was the final performance for our director, who is retiring, so there were speeches and standing ovations and partying, so that was very heartwarming and a lot of fun too.

Also, my younger brother's family visited my place the other day and I got to introduce my two nieces to my pet snake, Diamond, for the first time. I'm always a little wary of introducing Diamond to people, or even mentioning him, because it's common for people to be afraid of snakes, but my three-year-old niece was quite excited to meet him, practically pushing her nose up against the glass of his cage to see him better, and she giggled when he flicked his tongue out at her. It was adorable!

As for the rest... (Sorry, Jay, but I'd like to reply to eMTe's post, so I suggest you skip over this next part)

eMTe, it's nice that you aren't experiencing any real life hate, but I think it would be good for you to recognize that some other people aren't so lucky. There are people who are currently in power that are making policies that cause real life suffering. Just because you don't witness it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Yes, as busy as I have been repairing trains for customers at the hobby shop, it's a good sign that a clean, productive, educatonal hobby is still relevant in today's world. Word is getting out about a small store that can fix pretty much any model ever made, with a repairman whose personal train collection is like a visual history of model railroading from its roots in 19th Century Europe to today, and has a parts inventory to match! I've said it before, I'll say it again, a good hobby helps make a good citizen.

Without trains America Stops- Support Amtrak

Old trains never die. They just sit in ruin and wait until the day they are taken in by a skilled craftsman and rebuilt to their former glory.

Oh, you mean the "All hell breaks loose, then calms down, then breaks loose again, then all is right for a few years or so, then all hell really breaks loose again?" Yeah, it's been an adventure to say the least!

Without trains America Stops- Support Amtrak

Old trains never die. They just sit in ruin and wait until the day they are taken in by a skilled craftsman and rebuilt to their former glory.

Tormuse wrote:eMTe, it's nice that you aren't experiencing any real life hate, but I think it would be good for you to recognize that some other people aren't so lucky. There are people who are currently in power that are making policies that cause real life suffering. Just because you don't witness it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. (...)

but real-world suffering still does happen and we can work to prevent it. It would be a mistake to ignore it.

Quite the contrary, I experience it now more often than anytime. I was never anybody's favourite in social situations, due to my fierce individualism, reclusive nature, polite manners, sensibility and odd cultural interests. Thus, I was always a minority, even wihin minorities, and left totally open to various persecutions. From childhood up to my almost fourties. In a society that is getting more and more standardized these issues can only increase.

Adding to that, I am citizen of a country where politicians (and their fellow media workers) are just one or two steps from officially promoting any kind of long-forgotten kinds of hatred you can imagine. Be it racism, mysoginy, whatever. They promote them for a long time, but still not officially.

The thing is, I don't believe that promoting anything in a modern world AS WE KNOW IT (there's always some kind of progress, evolutionary speaking) can provide the backward change.

So, there's no return to fascism, nazism, autocracy of any old-fashioned kind. Simply because - and this is my opinion - modern hatred and violence are the product of completely new situation - huge (but not devastating) influence of media on human culture.

You can play this media game, being a politician, as long as you can, trying to influence common folk and their shifting mental states to make them elect you, but it won't influence general progress. As Railo once wisely said in this very topic - humans are adaptable.

Take as an example situation in Poland. What you can read in media is that Poland is now slowly (or fast, depends) slipping into some kind of Belarussian, Putinish, Francoish, Salazarian autocracy (suit yourself). Hell, I couldn't agree more! I want Kaczyński to die (from natural causes of course - note to homeland security). I hate the guy, I hate any kind of rightism, divisions among people, I hate church, nationalism, I am for gay pairs adopting kids etc etc.

Now, being a Pole, if I step down from these highly-strung issues for a while and turn my face to local issues, different picture reveals itself. For example, you can read in "big media" that Poles are nationalists, due to the country's homogeneity. There are now almost or exactly 2 millions of Ukrainians in Poland, working legally, semi-legally or illegally. Do they experience problems? No. Well, they should, according to articles in papers. Beatings, rapes, passports taken. But when you begin mereting them and talking to them - their stories don't fall far from usual immigrant stories. Sure, there are issues here and there, but not much fifferent from, lets say, trouble Mexicans experience in US.

Now, you can read in media that Polish goverment is pro-car and anti-bike or broadly speaking anti-ecology. False. Or bettwer to say, half-false. Government and its politicians (and fellow media workers) maybe are, but what happens down to the ground is another issue. Bike lanes in Polish cities, towns, along the rivers, soar in numbers.

As for Nazis. Don't know how the hairstyles develop in Canada, but here in Cracow - Nazis now look like queer folks. I don't even know how to to name these styles. They all scream "holocaust for muslims", "white power", but emotionally they are emos - they hide within their strongly developed personalities, not capable of letting go. But it's not nazism.

Basically, what you problem is, Graham, and I am trying to convince my fellow leftists (those who haven't abandoned me) is that you're not aware that your mental environment has changed in recent years. Due to widespread use of media, you react emotionally to any kind of symbolic, verbal and written abuse. Simply because you have different problems that your ancestors had - they only wanted to survive; you want to have full emotional, symbolic, syntactic control of "yourself".

Modern violence and hatred are about atomised people clashing, not societies or ideologies. Your fellow haters feel probably as insecure as you.

"As you have noticed over the years, we are not angry people." (itebygur)

eMTe, sorry if I was too presumptuous in saying that you don't experience real life hate... To be honest, I don't really experience anything like that, myself; I have a pretty privileged life. If I ever seem outraged by social justice issues that I read about on the internet, it's because in recent years, I decided to try to be more understanding of other people's experiences and recognize that not everyone has things as good as I do. So I listen to what people say and when people say that they are experiencing hatred or injustice, I believe them, even if I don't witness it myself. It doesn't mean that I feel guilty about having privilege; it just means that I think it's important to keep an eye out for little ways to make things better.

And there's no way to properly segué after that, but nevertheless, I want to say...

Merry Christmas, everyone!

[size=84]"A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe."
Pierre Burton[/size]